Monday, December 23, 2013

Monday Post

A nasty ice storm that left hundreds of thousands
without power in Ontario and Quebec tracked through the Maritimes on
Monday as authorities worked frantically to clear tree-strewn roadways,
restore downed hydro lines and get stranded travellers to their
destinations.

Hydro companies in the Greater Toronto Area — which
appeared to be the hardest hit by the weather system — warned some
residents to brace for the possibility of being without power until
Boxing Day or later.

The
oilsands are an insignificant contributor to global greenhouse gas
emissions, especially compared to America’s massive use of coal to
generate electricity, which we don’t do in Canada.

If you want to
protest against a national leader who, by your standards, is
indifferent to climate change, stop whining about our prime minister,
Stephen Harper, and go home.

Protest against your own president, Barack Obama.If you don’t know why, by your lights, you should be doing that, chew on this:

“By
the time Obama leaves office, the U.S. will pass Saudi Arabia as the
planet’s biggest oil producer and Russia as the world’s biggest
producer of oil and gas combined. In the same years, even as we’ve begun
to burn less coal at home, our coal exports have climbed to record
highs. We are, despite slight declines in our domestic emissions, a
global-warming machine.” Your president knows this. He has described the
U.S, accurately, as “the Saudi Arabia of coal.” You want to fight a
national leader who, by your lights, is recklessly exploiting fossil
fuels and endangering the planet?

Bishara Shlayan, a Christian Arab from Nazareth, is hoping to build a huge
statue of Jesus on Mount Precipice, near his home city.

Shlayan told The
Jerusalem Post in an interview that he has already begun fund-raising for the
project and that he is getting positive feedback from the Israeli Arab Christian
community as well as some Jews.

Earlier this month, the Islamist-led opposition in Syria broadcast a
video clip of a militant threatening the nation’s Christian minority,
with a focus on the Cherubim monastery and the large Jesus statue
recently erected in the region of Saidnaya in Damascus.

In the video, images of militants firing rockets at the ancient monastery and setting the building on fire appear (confirmed elsewhere). The Christ statue also appears being targeted, though it is unclear if it was damaged.The 128-foot tall bronze Christ statue,
christened “I have come to save the world,” was recently erected in
war-torn Syria, with support from the Russian Orthodox Church.

Having leaned on A&E to suspend their biggest star, GLAAD has now moved on to Stage Two:

“We
believe the next step is to use this as an opportunity for Phil to sit
down with gay families in Louisiana and learn about their lives and the
values they share,” the spokesman said.

Actually,
“the next step” is for you thugs to push off and stop targeting,
threatening and making demands of those who happen to disagree with you.
Personally, I think this would be a wonderful opportunity for the GLAAD
executive board to sit down with half-a-dozen firebreathing imams and
learn about their values, but, unlike the Commissars of the Bureau of
Conformity Enforcement, I accord even condescending little ticks like
the one above the freedom to arrange his own social calendar.

Any well-organised and well-funded special-interest group that can even entertain this sort of mind-bending bullying should be treated like patient zero in a zombie apocalypse. This sort of action isn't even insulting anymore; it's threatening.

"Our fate should not be decided by the church. We are a secular nation,"
said former prostitute Valerie Scott of Toronto, one of three
principals in the case, along with retired dominatrix Terri-Jean Bedford
and Vancouver sex worker Amy Lebovitch.

Countries
where prostitution is legal experience larger reported inflows of human
trafficking, according to new research that investigates the impact of
legalised prostitution on what is thought to be one of the fastest
growing criminal industries in the world....

The researchers used a global sample of 116
countries. They found that countries where prostitution is legal tend to
experience a higher reported inflow of human trafficking than countries
in which prostitution is prohibited.

The article’s authors also looked in more detail at
Sweden, Germany and Denmark, which changed their prostitution laws
during the past 13 years. Sweden prohibited it in 1999, while Germany
further legalised it by allowing third-party involvement in 2002.
Denmark decriminalised it in 1999 so that self-employed prostitution is
legal, but brothel operation is still forbidden.

Germany showed a sharp increase in reports of human
trafficking upon fully legalising prostitution in 2002. The number of
human trafficking victims in 2004 in Denmark, where it is
decriminalised, was more than four times that of Sweden, where it is
illegal, although the population size of Sweden is about 40 per cent
larger.